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She would like this, he thought. She would like the simplicity. Like a duel. Two principals, two seconds. How easy she was to understand!
Most women were, for him. Where other men saw endless complications and confusions, James saw simple principles at work. In the past, he’d used those principles to manipulate Fazi as well as numerous other women. He’d thought he could use them to manipulate Francesca Bonnard.
That was his first miscalculation.
He had no time to count the other mistakes because he perceived a movement in the shadows under the church’s portico.
A moment later, Marta Fazi emerged from the shadows, Piero at her side.
She walked out into the center of the square, her long black hair in a braid over her shoulder. No frills and ruffles and feathers for Marta.
She appeared taken with Francesca’s pearl-adorned headdress, though. As she looked at it, a mocking smile formed on her lips. Her gaze went briefly to James, back to the hat, then back, the smile fading, to him.
She stopped dead. “You.”
“You remember me,” said James. “I’m flattered.”
“I remember you, too,” said Piero. “I remember what you did to me. You were a great fool to come. You should have sent the prince. I have no quarrel with him.”
Fazi looked at her henchman.
“This is the devil who almost ripped my arm from my shoulder,” Piero said. “This is the one who threatens to torture me, and tries to frighten me, telling me what you’ll do to me.”
Fazi’s mocking smile returned, and she continued the last few paces toward them. “Ah, good,” she said. “This is even better than I hoped.” She looked at Francesca. “You have something for me, lady? A packet of letters? Or does your cavalier servente carry it for you, along with your handkerchief and fan?”
From the folds of her evening cloak, Francesca produced the pretty parcel. “I would not let him carry it,” she said. “He might be tempted to run away with it.”
Fazi laughed. Her black gaze returned to him. “You did not win her trust as you did mine? Perhaps you disappointed her in the bed? Your prick was too tired, perhaps, after being so busy all over Italy.”
“Oh, it never gets tired,” he said. “Bored, sometimes, but never tired. The only difficulty is that the lady and I were not in agreement regarding the papers your friend in England wants so badly.”
“Ah, yes. He wants these much more than he ever wanted his wife.” Fazi looked Francesca up and down. “But her father had money and friends with influence. This is why he married her, you see. When he had all the money and friends, he could have killed her, but he took pity on her and made a divorce instead.”
“Sweet of him,” said Francesca. “A truly kind gesture, that.”
“He was too kind, I tell him,” said Marta. “And you—what do you do with the second chance he gives you, fine lady? You throw yourself away on this one?” She jerked her chin at James. “His heart is black and he’s false, false. A thief and a whore.”
This was not going well. Fazi was on her way to an eruption and he wasn’t sure what Francesca’s state was.
All things considered, perhaps he should have explained that mission in Rome to Francesca.
“Vero,” he said, trying to inject an apologetic note in his voice. It’s true.
Neither the admission nor the repentant note drew Fazi’s attention back to him. She was raging about him but she wanted to provoke Francesca, in the hopes the English lady would say or do something reckless, and give Marta an excuse to wield her knife.
He knew better than to look at Francesca or try to warn her now, though. She seemed unmoved. He reminded himself what a fine actress she was.
Marta was no actress. She showed every feeling that moved her, and she was easily moved.
“A pretty liar and a cheat and a great whore,” she taunted. “You give up a prince for this one? I would not give a blind beggar on the street for him—a blind, crippled beggar with black warts on his prick. Stupid cow, what men you choose!”
Cow, as Francesca no doubt knew, was a deadly insult.
“Yes, what a stupid cow I am,” Francesca said with her coolest smile. She fingered the pearls at her throat. “Rich men shower me with jewels while you—”
“I had jewels!” Marta snapped. “Emeralds. Did this man tell you how he made love to me so sweet, only to steal my beautiful emeralds and run away?”
“So that’s why you took mine, the other night, when you were playing at being a nun,” Francesca said. “You wanted a replacement?”
“Mine were better!”
“Bigger,” James said. “A great, vulgar lot of inferior stones.”
“Vulgar?” Marta’s eyes flashed dangerously.
But his success in drawing her off, to focus on him, was short lived. She wasn’t interested in him. It was Francesca in her too-expensive clothes and magnificent jewels. Marta Fazi was far more jealous of those articles than of a mere male, a temporary lover. James came into it only as a way to taunt the expensively garbed lady.
“What does it matter?” Francesca said, dismissing the subject with a wave of her hand.
Oh, Marta would love that, the arrogant dismissal.
“We did not come here to quibble about who has better jewelry,” Francesca went on, “or whether size matters or who lets an utterly faithless and ruthless man order her about.”
“Your Gianni is faithful to me,” Marta said, jabbing her thumb against her ample chest.
“Really? You know him personally?”
What the devil was Francesca doing? Was she deliberately trying to provoke her?
Or was she simply stalling, trying to give Lurenze and his men time to get here?
“I know him for a long time,” Fazi said. “Years. Before he married you. After he married you. For me he keeps a beautiful house in London. When I go there to visit him, he gives me everything I ask for. Whatever I do for him, he rewards me, generously. When I am in trouble, he makes the trouble go away. But I have wasted too much time talking to you. Give me the letters.”
“He does all that?” said Francesca. “Good heavens, how busy he must be. You are—what? Mistress Number Fifty-two? Eighty-seven? No wonder he needed a rich wife.”
“I am first, always,” Marta said.
“Johanna Ide will be surprised to hear that,” Francesca said. “But she’s in London, with him all the time, and you’re not.”
Fazi was momentarily nonplussed. “I don’t know this name.”
“Of course you don’t. Why would he tell you about his Lady Macbeth?”
“I don’t care about their names,” Fazi said, lifting her chin. “The rest are whores only, and men must have their whores, as you know. But I waste enough time. The letters, if you please, my fine lady.”
“Oh, dear, I hope you haven’t become too dependent on my former husband,” Francesca said. “Because he’s not going to be able to do any of that anymore—the house, the rewards, and making trouble go away.”
Marta’s eyes narrowed and the hand she’d stretched out for the parcel went to her waist, where she kept her knife.
James tensed, waiting for the attack.
“Sorry,” Francesca said. “I never did walk the streets, as you did, and so I’ve always been uneasy about meeting people in the dead of night in deserted squares. I took a gondola ride yesterday to San Lazzaro and
gave the letters to an English gentleman there. They’re on their way to England now. But not to your dear Gianni. I should give up on him if I were you, and find another man. A beautiful woman like you, and still young—you can find someone better, a man who doesn’t make you work so hard while he keeps a harem in England, and promises all his women the same things he promises you.”
Marta had her head cocked to one side. She was listening, trying to puzzle it out. James had an idea how she felt. He should have realized Francesca wouldn’t play by his rules.
“This is a joke,” Fazi said at last. “I see the letters, in that little parcel in your hand.”
“You mean this?” Francesca held out the parcel. “Well, yes, it’s quite funny, actually. I felt sorry for you, for the wicked tricks men play on you. I felt sorry about all the trouble you went to.”
Marta snatched the parcel away. But she was woman enough not to cut the ribbons. Her gaze darting about the square—putting James in mind of a bird of prey guarding its dinner—she untied them. She pulled away the silken wrapping, revealing a shallow box. She stuffed the pretty wrapping and ribbon into her bodice and opened the box.
Within sparkled a sapphire parure, the one Bonnard had worn the first night James saw her.
Fazi gave a little gasp.
James swallowed a groan. Any thief worth his salt would feel the same.
“They’re yours,” Francesca said. “For your trouble. Take them and go away. Before it’s too late.”
“There’s nothing else here for you,” James said. “You’ll never get the letters and Elphick can’t get you out of trouble anymore. If it were up to me, you’d get nothing but a noose. But it isn’t up to me. This lady thinks you deserve something for your trouble. I don’t, believe me. In any case, if I were you, I should get away while I could, before the soldiers come.”
Marta took a step back. She turned away. And softly in his native tongue she told Piero, “Kill them.”
Before she’d finished uttering the command, Piero had his knife out. “Gladly,” he said, and lunged.
James pushed Francesca out of the way and flung out his hand, catching Piero’s wrist. James turned his back on the smaller man, to add the force and size of his body to wrestle the knife from him. Pedro, small but tough and wiry, held on, and flung his free arm round James’s throat.
